The top 10 schools
1. Fayetteville-Manlius (Team I)
2. Jamesville-DeWitt
3. Fayetteville-Manlius (Team II)
4. Camden
5. Red Creek
6. East Syracuse-Minoa
7. Chittenango (Team II)
8. Clinton
9. Chittenango (Team I)
10. Marcellus
The top five teams go to states. However, only one team from a school can go to the state competiton. That means F-M Team 2 will not go; ES-M will go instead.Although he had been awake since 5 a.m. Saturday, Jeremy Broomfield and his robot, Hammerhead, were alert and ready for battle.

The Clinton High School sophomore was preparing to watch his robot take part in a Sumobot competition, an event where two remote-controlled robots rush to knock the other off a platform. The last robot left wins.

Broomfield was one of about 500 area high school students at Saturday’s Mid-Sate Regional Science Olympiad at Le Moyne College in Syracuse. Students from 32 schools competed in categories ranging from ornithology to forensics to robotics.

In previous years, teams from Fayettevile-Manlius have walked away with the highest ranking, but Broomfield was hoping that would change - at least in the Sumobot competition.

“We’d like to topple the king in Science Olympiad,” he said.

Topple or not, Science Olympiad is more than a competition - it’s fun, said Carmen Guinta, the site coordinator and a physics professor at Le Moyne College.

The fun wasn’t only for the students. Parents and teachers watched eagerly as students showcased their scientific feats and skills.

“Sometimes I want to get in there and compete myself, said Meredith Callaghan, a chemistry teacher at Clinton High School.

The competition can also develop skills that can someday lead to to jobs for the students, said Josh Buchman, a teacher at Fayetteville-Manlius High School and coordinator for the competition.

“For a lot of kids, this is really one of the life-changing events that gets them to pursue a career in a science field,” Buchman said.

For others, the competition has become a tradition.

At Fayetteville-Manlius, students begin creating blueprints for science experiments as early as November. The school holds tryouts for students to earn a spot on the Olympian team.